Malcom McDowell Explains How He Was Cast as Alex in the 1971 Stanley Kubrick Film 'A Clockwork Orange'

While appearing on The Magnificent Others podcast, legendary actor Malcom McDowell explained in great detail to host Billy Corgan how Stanley Kubrick cast him in the lead role as Alex in the dystopian 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. McDowell shared that he thought it was just because he saw him in the 1968 Lindsay Anderson film If…, but as it turned out, that was only half the story, as Kubrick’s wife Christiane shared during a trip to Australia.

I was doing, you know, Q&A things and …somebody asked me how I got to be cast and I went, “Oh, I think he saw “If….” That was all I knew and so Cristiane said, “Oh, Malcolm, no.” What happened was the film was the red hot thing in London. Everybody was talking about “If…” and Stanley had a projectionist on 24/7 standby got Paramount to bring out the reels of film to watch it and they were all there watching it at the house. She goes, “You made your first entrance. Stanley hit the intercom and said, “Uh, re-lace that.” Let’s see that again. Four times. After the fourth time… Stanley looked at his wife and said, “We found our Alex.”

McDowell accepted the role, and history was made.